This invention is used in the sport of lacrosse, which is considered the oldest team contact sport of North America. The sport of lacrosse is played with sticks used for catching, carrying, and throwing a ball into the opposing team's goal. Lacrosse sticks have a handle and a head. The head of the stick is a frame. Strung across the head frame with varying degrees of looseness and tension are flexible elements such as strings, thongs and/or netting material. Within the head frame, the thongs and/or netting material are typically strung either traditionally (a complex pattern of leather and nylon strings woven together) or in mesh (a piece of mesh material attached to the head by nylon strings) to create what is known as a pocket. According to the jargon of the sport, a ball in play will be held in the pocket. The pocket is an area of slack in the flexible elements. And the determining factor to how each individual pocket throws (the degree up or down out of the pocket when the ball is released) is the tension controlled by the shooting strings.
In the lexicon of the sport, the word “tension” does not carry the meaning that an engineer would use in the sense of a force being applied. Rather, players of the sport use the word “tension” to identify the amount of slack or excess length in a flexible element.
In the act of throwing or shooting, the stick is swung in an arc and the ball, which is initially located around the center of the pocket, begins to travel away from the center of the arc out of the pocket due to centrifugal force. While the ball is accelerating out of the pocket, it remains in constant contact with the pocket and the friction created when the ball passes over the shooting strings determines the degree up or down the ball will travel once released from the pocket. The greater the tension of the shooting strings, the greater the downward angle the ball will follow after hitting the strings. The lesser the tension, the greater the upward angle the ball will follow since there is not as much friction redirecting it down.
There may be some players who do not use shooting strings and prefer to use graduated tensions in the flexible elements. However, the majority of players prefer to add shooting strings into the stick head flexible elements.
Most players of the sport use more than one shooting string in their stick head pocket. The reason for this is to provide a more fluent release from the stick head pocket. This is achieved by staggering the differences in tension throughout multiple shooting strings, where the first shooting string the ball comes in contact with contains the least amount of tension among the shooting strings, and the amount of tension becomes gradually greater with each shooting string the ball comes in contact with. This eliminates the abrupt release experienced when there is only one shooting string and the ball experiences a great amount of friction all at once instead of small amounts of friction gradually. A small amount of friction gradually creates a smooth, fluid release most players of the sport prefer. However, every player is different and has his/her own personal preference as to how the ball is released from their pocket, so best release option, whether a smooth, gradual release or a hard, abrupt release remains up to each individual players taste. It is very difficult to create the perfect tension for your style of throwing/shooting, and even when the perfect tension is found, it is extremely difficult to maintain that tension over long periods of time.
Until now, the shooting string has been nothing more than common string-like material. This was intricately interwoven into the pocket, and wound over itself repeatedly. This is not only very difficult, but creates the problem of permanence, making it extremely hard to add and remove the strings. Once in place, the degree of tension had to be guesstimated by hand, and when the appropriate degree of tension was thought to be found, the string had to be quickly tied in knots by hand, hoping to not have altered the tension in the process. The problem here is that since the player is guesstimating and tying knots by hand, it becomes a very long and tedious task trying to find the perfect tension and maintaining that exact tension once found. In addition, once the player finds the perfect tension, it takes only weeks, days, and sometimes even hours before the knots loosen causing wild throws.
There are many different reasons causing the shooting string knots to become undone. The main reason would probably be due to the weather, lacrosse is an outdoor sport so the lacrosse sticks are exposed to nearly all forms of natural elements. The most common element would have to be rain, when the shooting strings become wet, they expand in size and are more susceptible to be stretched when force is applied to them. While playing the game of lacrosse, each player must catch and throw the ball numerous times. Each time these actions are performed force is applied to the shooting strings casing them to stretch and their knots to loosen. Once this happens, the tension in the shooting strings becomes distorted causing the ball to be released from the sticks pocket differently, ultimately resulting in throws/shots being very off target to no fault of the player, but by fault of the shooting strings.
Even when not raining shooting string knots have a way of coming undone at the most inopportune times. When the knots do come untied, it is a very unpleasant process to correct this problem. If this should happen during a practice, a player is forced to call a timeout and be replaced. The player must go to the sideline and attempt many various tensions until the player finally finds the appropriate tension. Meanwhile, the player is missing practice.
Although the practice situation of untied knots or stretched strings is annoying, it may just be the best case scenario for a player's shooting strings to fail. For example, imagine playing in a championship game and with your team down by one with only seconds left in the game. The wear and tear of a full game's worth of applied forces to your shooting strings has caused their knots to loosen without your knowing it. The knots finally give way and become undone just as you become open mere feet in front of the opposition's goalkeeper. Your teammate delivers a perfect pass to you with three seconds left on the clock giving you the perfect opportunity to tie the game and send it into overtime. You wind up and deliver your shot; and you can see in your mind's eye the ball entering the goal before you even release it. Then, to your horror, you see the ball sailing away, completely off line from its intended target. Your heart drops as you realize what must have happened as you watch your shot travel into the parking lot and the opposition begin to celebrate. You blew it, or should I say, your shooting strings blew it. There is no worse feeling then wondering if that shot would have scored if your shooting strings had remained at the tension you were used to, the tension you were expecting when you took that final shot.